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Science & Mathematics

The Museum's collections hold thousands of objects related to chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, and other sciences. Instruments range from early American telescopes to lasers. Rare glassware and other artifacts from the laboratory of Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, are among the scientific treasures here. A Gilbert chemistry set of about 1937 and other objects testify to the pleasures of amateur science. Artifacts also help illuminate the social and political history of biology and the roles of women and minorities in science.

The mathematics collection holds artifacts from slide rules and flash cards to code-breaking equipment. More than 1,000 models demonstrate some of the problems and principles of mathematics, and 80 abstract paintings by illustrator and cartoonist Crockett Johnson show his visual interpretations of mathematical theorems.

In 1702, living in London and serving as Master of the Mint, Newton sat for Godfrey Kneller, the most famous and probably the most expensive portrait painter in London. For this portrait he wore a red banyan and a flowing wig. This is one of many engraved copies of that image.

The text at the bottom reads “Sr ISAAC NEWTON” and “G. Kneller pinxt” and “Wm. Sharp sculpt” and “G. Kearsley, No 46 Fleet Street.” Newton here looks to his left (rather than to his right as in the Kneller portrait). A laurel branch appears at one side and an oil lamp at the other. Below are figures of a globe, a large lens, a refracting telescope, books, papers, geometrical diagrams, and a woman who probably represents Urania, the muse of astronomy.

William Sharp (1749-1824) was an engraver in London. George Kearsley (fl. 1758-1791) was a publisher of books and prints. He was also responsible for The Copper Plate Magazine, “a monthly treasure for admirers of the imitative arts.” Our engraving appeared in the 1778 edition of that work.

Christopher Clavius (1538-1612) was a German Jesuit mathematician and astronomer who spent most of his adult life in Rome, opposing the Copernican model of the solar system and promoting the Gregorian reform of the calendar.

This portrait shows Clavius with a pair of dividers in his right hand, an armillary sphere on the table beside him, and a horary quadrant and astrolabe on the wall behind. It appeared in Isaac Bullart, Académie des Sciences et des Arts, Contenant les Vies, & les Eloges Historiques des Hommes Illustres (Amsterdam, 1682), vol. 2, p. 117. It is copied from an image done in 1609 by Francisco Villamena, a leading engraver in Rome who specialized in portraits filled with realistic still-life details. The signature at bottom reads “E. de Boulonois fecit.”

This hand-colored engraving depicts gentlefolk dallying with a globe, an armillary sphere, a couple of telescopes, a pair of dividers, two L-squares, and a back staff. The text at bottom reads: “London. Printed for and sold by F. Bull on Ludgate Hill, J. Boydell in Cheapside, & W. Herbert on London Bridge.”

This half-length engraved portrait of Jean LeRond d’Alembert (1717-1783) shows this French mathematician and philosophe sitting with quill pen in one hand and dividers in the other. Papers, books, and other drawing instruments are strewn across the desk in front of him, and more books, a rolled chart, and a globe sit on the cabinet behind. The text at bottom reads: “Dessiné par M. R. Jollain, Peintre du Roi, et Gravé par B. L. Henriquez, Graveur de S. M. I. de / toutes les Russies, et de l’Academie Imperiale des Beaux Arts de St. Petersbourg.”

This image was published in Paris in 1777, along with similar portraits of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot, the other principal authors of the Encyclopédie. The prints were commissioned by Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, the Paris bookman who was then producing a Supplément to the Encyclopédie. They sold for three francs each. Nicholas-René Jollain was an artist in Paris. Benoît-Louis Henriquez was an engraver in Paris.

This image appeared as the frontispiece of vol. 14 of the Encyclopaedia Londinensis (1816). The “Chapman sculp.” signature in the lower left may refer to John Chapman (fl. 1787-1811), a London engraver. The text at bottom (cropped from our copy) read “London Published April 13, 1816, by G. Jones.”

A “Description of the Frontispiece Illustrating Mechanics” appears on p. [1] of the book. It reads: “Archimedes, the founder of theoretical mechanics, is represented in a contemplative attitude, in the midst of his pupils and of the instruments of the mechanical powers. In the foreground a youth is tracing on the sand a diagram expressing the famous discovery of Archimedes, the proportion of the sphere to the cylinder; to which another, leaning on a book, is attentive. On the right hand are shown the action of the screw and the wedge, and higher up, of the balance. From the ceiling is suspended a system of pulleys. On the left is a globe, the hydrostatical bellows, and the pump which bears the name of Archimedes’s screw; the action of the inclined plane is also shown in the left corner; and in the back ground, on the same side, is a youth working a crane.”

Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717-1777) was a cartographer and engraver in Augsburg who worked with Mattheus Seutter, married Seutter's daughter Euphrosina, and succeeded to part of the business after Seutter’s death in 1757.

This print might have been sold separately or bound in an atlas. It is, for instance, plate #2 in the Atlas Geographique (Nuremberg, 1778).

This engraving is marked “Plate IV” and “Van Marum’s Gasometer” and “Heny Lascelles delt” and “J. Pass Sculpt” and “London, Published as the Act directs, Feby 21, 1801 by J. Wilkes.” It was prepared for the fourth volume of the Encyclopaedia Londinensis (1810).

Martinus Van Marum was a Dutch chemist who, after having seen Lavoisier’s demonstrations of the composition of water in Paris in 1785, devised a user-friendly gasometer for measuring the amount of hydrogen and of oxygen produced by this operation.

John Wilkes (1750-1810) was a London printer and bookseller. His Encyclopaedia Londoniensis was published in 24 volumes between about 1801 and 1828.

Ref: “A Letter from Doctor Van Marum to M. Berthollet, containing a description of a new Gasometer,” The Monthly Review 7 (1792): 493-494.

Johann Elert Bode (1747-1826) served as the director of the astronomical observatory of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, edited the Astronomisches Jahrbuch, and published several popular texts and atlases. This planisphere is derived from a chart in his Anleitung zur Kenntniss des gestirnten Himmels (Hamburg, 1768). It extends from the north equatorial pole to 38° South declination, and shows the stars of magnitudes 1 to 6. The brightest stars are identified by Bayer letters. Some stars are named.

Johann Elert Bode (1747-1826) served as the director of the astronomical observatory of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, edited the Astronomisches Jahrbuch, and published several popular texts and atlases. This planisphere is derived from a chart in his Anleitung zur Kenntniss des gestirnten Himmels (Hamburg, 1768). It extends from the south equatorial pole to 38° South declination, and shows the stars of magnitudes 1 to 6. The brightest stars are identified by Bayer letters. Some stars are named. The text at the top reads “Stereographischer Entwurf des Gestirnten Himmels / vom Nordpol bis zum 38sten Grad südlicher Abweichung von J. E. Bode.” The “gestochen von C. C. Glassbach” signature at bottom refers to Carl Christian Glasbach (b. 1751), an engraver in Berlin.

This is similar to the other Bode planisphere in the collections, but has several constellations that originated with Bode: Renthier within the bounds of Cepheus; Der Einseidler within the bounds of Die Waage; Messier within the bounds of Casseopeja; Friedrichs Ehre, Die Georgs Harfe within the bounds of Der Fluss Eridanus; Herschels Telescop, Mauer Quadrant, Die Katz within the bounds of Die Wasser Schlanger; Der Luft Ballon within the bounds of Der Steinbock; Die Logleine within the bounds of Der Compas; Die Electrisirmachine within the bounds of Die Bildhauer Werkstadt; and Buchdrucker Werkstadt within the bounds of Das Schiff des Argo.

Appointed in 1675 to the newly created post of Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed (1646-1719) compiled the first telescopic catalog of the positions and magnitudes of stars visible from Greenwich. He also prepared a set of celestial charts that, in his words, were to be “the glory of the work, and, next the catalogue, the usefullest part of it.” In 1729 these charts were published in the Atlas Coelestis by the late Reverend Mr. John Flamsteed Regius Professor of Astronomy at Greenwich.

This chart is from that work. It extends from 40° to 90° North Polar Distance and from 4h to 9h Right Ascension. It is drawn on a Sanson-Flamsteed sinusoidal projection. It shows the stars of magnitudes 1 to 7, with the brighter ones identified by Bayer letters.

Working from Flamsteed’s catalog and manuscript maps, Abraham Sharp drew the coordinates and positioned the stars. James Thornhill (and other artists whose names are not known) drew the constellation figures. And various engravers in London and Amsterdam prepared the copper plates from which the prints could be made.